Re: [Motion-user] Masking issues - RPi 4

[Roger H. <rog...@gm...>]

I never found smart mask to work reasonably.  Eventually with some
wind it seems to mask out almost everything.

And the area_detect I think only works for events.

You need to make a mask file.  Take an image from the camera, read it
into gimp, then paint everything black you want ignored, and white you
don't want to ignore and export it as a binary pgm.

file should look like this:

file gs2_mask.pgm
gs2_mask.pgm: Netpbm image data, size = 3840 x 2160, rawbits, greymap

And have the same size as your camera image.

Then add to the config file this line:
mask_file /etc/motion/gs2_mask.pgm

I have to adjust mine and/or prune trees getting into the edges of the
images every so often.



On Mon, Jun 23, 2025 at 3:56 PM Barry Martin <bar...@gm...> wrote:
>
>
> Hi Folks!
>
>
> Having problems figuring out how to use masking options.
>
>
> Hardware: Raspberry Pi 4, Bookworm, Wayland (probably the Labwc option – I don’t know [yet!] how to test for that). ELP USB camera: ELP-USBFHD06MT-KL36IR lsusb: ID 32e4:9230 HD USB Camera.
>
>
> Motion software is Version 4.7.0.
>
>
> There is a ceiling fan along with tree and shadow motions with are giving a constant series of recordings. I can’t reposition the camera to get the fan out of view because of position between window glass and mini-blinds.
>
>
> What I have tried so far:
>
>
> In camera1.conf first added
>
> smart_mask_speed 5
>
> Didn’t seem to make any difference.
>
>
> This afternoon commented smart mask and tried
>
> area_detect 789
>
> so just pays attention to the bottom portion. Still picking up a lot of moving shadows from the trees so probably not my best option but again not seeing any changes in sensitivity so tons of recordings.
>
>
> Thanks for pointing me in the right direction!
>
> Barry
>
>
>
>
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